David Peace - 1974

The men tried to get back into the van and the van, definitely white, began to reverse.

The nearest police van jerked into life, churned mud and hit the van full on in the side, nought to seventy in half the metres.

The van stopped dead and the police descended on it, drag ging men out through broken windows, exposing flanks of white flesh.

Sticks and stones set about their bones.

Within the circle a man stepped forward, barechested. The man lowered his head and charged, screaming.

Instantaneously the police snake sprang, moving in and swal lowing up the families in a sea of black and sticks.

I stood up too quickly and toppled down the banking, back towards my car, the motorway, and out.

I reached the bottom of the banking, puking:

Eddie Dunford, North of England Crime Correspondent, with my hand upon the Viva’s door, saw the flames reflected in the glass.

I ran along the hard shoulder to the emergency phone, praying to Christ that it worked and, when it did, beseeching the operator to summon every available emergency service to the Hunslet and Beeston exit of the M1 where, I breathlessly assured her, a ten-car pile-up was fast becoming more, with a petrol tanker ablaze.

That done, I ran back along the motorway and back up the banking, looking down on a battle being lost and a victory that filled my whole body with a rage as impotent as it was engulfing.

The West Yorkshire Metropolitan Police had opened up the backs of their vans and were throwing the bloodied and beaten men inside.

Within the big wheel of fire, officers stripped gypsy women and children of their clothes, throwing the rags into the flames and randomly striking out with their clubs at the naked white skin of the women.

Sudden and deafening shotgun blasts punctuated the horror, as petrol tanks exploded and gypsy dogs were shot, as the police took their shotguns to anything that looked remotely salvageable.

I saw in the midst of this hell, naked and alone, a tiny gypsy girl, ten years old or less, short brown curls and bloody face, standing in that circle of hate, a finger in her mouth, silent and still.

Where the fuck were the fire engines, the ambulances?

My rage became tears; lying at the top of the banking I searched my pockets for my pen, as though writing something, anything, might make it all seem a bit better than it was or a little less real. Too cold to fucking grasp the pen properly, scraw-ling red biro across dirty paper, hiding there in those skinny bushes, it didn’t help at all.

And then he was right there, coming towards me.

Wiping the tears away with mud, I saw a red and black shining face tearing straight out of hell and up the banking towards me.

I half stood to greet it, but fell straight back down into the ground as three black-winged policemen grabbed the man by his feet and greedily took him back down into their boots and clubs.

And then I saw HIM, in the distance, behind it all.

Detective Chief Superintendent George Oldman, illuminated behind the sticks and the bones like some bloody cave painting against the side of a police van, smoking and drinking with some other coppers as the van rocked from side to side.

George Oldman and friends tilted back their heads to the night and laughed loud and long until George stopped dead and stared straight at where I lay 500 yards away.

I threw my face deep down into the mud until it filled my mouth and small stones cut into my face. Suddenly I was ripped free of the mud, pulled up by the roots of my hair, and all I could see was the dark night sky above me before the fat white face of a policeman rose like the moon into my own.

A learner fist went hard into my face, two fingers in my mouth, two blinding my eyes. “Close your fucking eyes and don’t you speak.”

I did as I was told.

“Nod if you know the Redbeck Cafe on the Doncaster Road.” It was a vicious whisper, hot in my ear.

I nodded.

“You want a story, be there at five o’clock this morning.”

Then the glove was gone and I opened my eyes to the black fucking sky and the sound of a thousand screaming sirens.

Welcome home Eddie.

Four hours straight driving, trying to outrun my visions of children.

A four-hour tour of a local hell: Pudsey, Tingley, Hanging Heaton, Shaw Cross, Batley, Dewsbury, Chickenley, Earlsheaton, Gawthorpe, Horbury, Castleford, Pontefract, Normanton, Hem-sworth, Fitzwilliam, Sharlston, and Streethouse.

Hard towns for hard men.

Me, soft; too pussy to drive through Clare’s Morley or sneak a peak at Devil’s Ditch, too chicken to go back to the gypsy camp or even home to Ossett.

Somewhere in the middle of it all, sleep nailing shut my eyes, I’d drifted into some Cleckheaton lay-by and dreamt of Southern girls called Anna or Sophie and a life before, waking with a hard-on and my father’s final rattle:

“ The South’11 turn you bloody soft, it will .”

Awake to the face of a brown-haired girl ringed in a wheel of fire and school photographs of little girls no longer here.

Fear turned the key as I rubbed my eyes free and drove off through the grey light, everywhere the browns and the greens waking up all damp and dirty, everywhere the hills and the fields, the houses and the factories, everywhere filling me with fear, covering me in clay.

Fear’s abroad, home and away.

Dawn on the Doncaster Road.

I pulled the Viva into the car park behind the Redbeck Cafe and Motel. I parked between two lorries and sat listening to Tom Jones sing I Can’t Break the News to Myself on Radio 2. It was ten to five when I walked across the rough ground to the toilets round the back.

The toilets reeked, the tiled floor covered in black piss. The mud and clay had dried hard on my skin, turning it a pale red beneath the dirt. I ran the hot tap and plunged my hands into the ice-cold water. I brought the water to my face, closing my eyes and running my wet hands through my hair. The brown water trickled down my face and on to my jacket and shirt. Again I brought the water up to my face and closed my eyes.

I heard the door open and felt a blast of colder air.

I started to open my eyes.

My legs went from beneath me, kicked out.

My head hit the edge of the sink, bile filled my mouth.

My knees found the floor, my chin the sink.

Someone grabbed my hair, forcing my face straight back into the sink’s dirty water.

“Don’t you fucking try to look at me.” That vicious whisper again, bringing me an inch out of the water and holding me there.

Thinking, Fuck You, Fuck You, Fuck You. Saying, “What do you want?”

“Don’t fucking speak.”

I waited, my windpipe crushed against the edge of the sink.

There was a splash and I squinted, making out what looked to be a thin manila envelope lying next to the sink.

The hand on my hair relaxed, then suddenly pulled back my head and casually banged it once into the front of the sink.

I reeled, thrashing out with my arms, and fell back on to my arse. Pain pounded through my forehead, water seeped through the seat of my pants.

I pulled myself up by the sink, stood and turned and fell through the door out into the car park.

Nothing.

Two lorry drivers leaving the cafe pointed at me and shouted, laughing.

I leant against the door to the toilets and fell back through, the two lorry drivers doubling up with laughter.

The A4 manila envelope lay in a pool of water by the sink. I picked it up and shook off brown drops of water, opening and closing my eyes to ease the pain in my head.

I opened the door to the cubicle and grabbed the metal chain, flushing away the long pale yellow shit in the bowl. I closed the cracked plastic lid on the roaring water and sat down and opened the envelope.